JOSÉ GABRIEL MARTÍNEZ SERNA

"The Society of Jesus, Viticulture, and the Rise and Decline of an Indian Frontier Town: Santa María de las Parras, Nueva Vizcaya, 1598-1822"

Martínez-Serna’s dissertation is a frontier community development study of the town of Parras during the colonial period.  Located in what it today northeastern Mexico, Parras was founded as a Jesuit mission to the Lagunero Indians, and the Society of Jesus was a crucial player in the various stages of the economic, social, and cultural history of this frontier community .  The Indians of Parras, through their town council and the help of the Society, retained the legal title to vineyards and water rights granted to the mission by the Spanish king at the time of its founding.  This created a highly unusual situation whereby the town’s Indians were wealthier and politically more powerful than most of the community’s Spaniards.  With its balmy weather and water springs, Parras became a thriving frontier community supplying agricultural products to mining centers farther west, and the viticulture hub of New Spain, its wine and brandy consumed in the vast region between Zacatecas, San Antonio, Texas, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.  The study merges the historiography of colonial Mexico with the frontier historiography of the American Southwest, geographically and methodologically bridging these often mutually exclusive schools.

For more information about Gabriel Martínez-Serna, click here.